Index

Choosing Your Tools

Setting up your work environment

When preparing to do a task it’s important to have the right environment to do the job. You don’t do pottery in the middle of a fancy and expensive dining room using a lazy Susan as your pottery wheel. Similarly, ideally, you wouldn’t write an important professional paper in the middle of Dave and Busters or construction site with a crayon. When developing software, the “environment” might refer to the environment that surrounds you (your room, office etc.) but more often it refers to the tools you are using to create your products. In this class, the products or assets you are creating include:

  • Text files which are written in HTML
  • Graphics which are created or edited in a graphics program such as Adobe Photoshop
  • Text files which are written in CFML (the markup language of ColdFusion which we use in this class)
  • Text files which are written in JavaScript
  • Text files which contain CSS (Cascading Style Sheets)
  • Databases which reside on a SQL server (in this case Microsoft SQL Server)
  • Spreadsheets

Here are the tools (and types of tools) we’ll be using to create these things?

  • A working computer (We’ll take that as established)
  • A folder structure set up in which to work and save files
  • An IDE: IDE stands for Integrated Development Environment. This is usually a software package that performs multiple tasks such as having a Text Editor, an FTP client, the ability to view and manage a hierarchy of folders and files and other functions that make a developer’s life easier. There are two IDEs which we reference in this course: Adobe Dreamweaver, IntelliJ from Jet Brains
  • A SQL Studio – This allows you to create, alter and delete databases, populate them with data, and then reference or update the data later. We will use MSSQL Studio, a free product from Microsoft, in this class. An alternative tool would be DataGrip from JetBrains which you can use with a free student license. If you are a Mac user, you will need to use DataGrip or another tool since MSSQL Studio does not run on a Mac.
  • The spreadsheets can be made with Microsoft Excel, Open Office Calc or even tables in Word (definitely not the ideal tool but it will work)
  • A Command Line Interface (CLI) tool – We’ll be using a tool called CommandBox to easily set up a working web and application server on our local machines to speed up development.

It’s also important to understand what the workflow is going to be so you can move these assets to the correct locations and make creating the assets as easy as possible.

You might have noticed that I have listed a few different software packages that can be used for each function. I would imagine you’re asking (or yelling) – “How do I choose what tools to use?” Without knowing your unique situation, I’ve come up with a few guidelines which target different situations that should cover at least the majority of us. In order to figure out which package is right for you, I’ve broken it down into a few questions and, whenever possible, I’ve included software which is available for free.

First - Choosing an IDE:

If you......

| ARE: Just starting out in web development DON’T: see “code” as the career path you want to take HAVE: the resources to pay for it | ARE: A Computer Science major/professional OR DO: work with other languages, especially Java, C, or mobile application development OR DO: envision yourself working as a part of a team of other developers OR WANT: to stretch yourself to use a more powerful tool AND DON’T: want to spend any money on software if you can help it | | --- | --- | | Use Dreamweaver Read: “Setting Up Dreamweaver” | Use IntelliJ with the free student license Read “Setting up IntelliJ” |

Note: All of these tools are very equipped to do what we will accomplish in this course. I used Dreamweaver for years and IntelliJ every day and I’ve been in this industry for almost two decades. The difference is the level of complexity in the setup and what features each of the tools have. Dreamweaver is very fast to get started but doesn’t necessarily have all the bells and whistles. IntelliJ and others have some features which are helpful to those working as part of a team or with other languages. Dreamweaver has some limitations in these areas but it works very well.

When you get to the point where you are using what are called “Server Side” languages, there is special software on the server that is needed to open your web pages. This can make debugging and testing your web pages more tedious since you frequently need to upload them to the server simply to open then. In many cases, you can install that software onto your local machine to help speed things up. We’re going to use a CLI called CommandBox from OrtusSolutions to set up a CF enabled web server on your local machine very easily.

Whichever of these tools you use, try to get them set up this week. This includes downloading, installing and opening the software and using them to connect to the UML servers in three ways

  1. To the Database
  2. Via FTP
  3. Via a web browser.

There are more details in the subsequent documents.

Database Tool

That’s it for now. Start with the general set up for everyone and then move on to the specific IDE you chose to use for further instructions.

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